Take, for example, Spurgeon’s sermon from verse 38. He asked, what is my peculiar cross? It may be the giving up of certain pleasures, or the enduring of reproach or poverty. It might be the suffering of losses and persecution for Christ’ sake. It’s my consecrating of all to Jesus. What am I to do with my cross? I am to deliberately take it up. I am to boldly face it – after all it’s only a wooden cross. I am to patiently endure it, because I only have to carry it a little way. I am to follow Christ with it. And what should encourage me to do this? Necessity drives me – I cannot be a disciple without cross-bearing. Society – Better men than I have carried this cross. Love – Jesus bore a far heavier cross than mine. Faith – Grace will be given to me equal to its weight. Hope – It will be good for me. Zeal – Jesus will be honoured. Experience – I shall yet find pleasure in it, for it will produce much blessing. Expectation – Glory will be the reward of it. That old Prince of Preachers concluded, “Let not the righteous dread the cross, for it will not crush them. It may be painted with iron colours by our fears, but it is not made of that heavy metal. We can bear it, and we will bear it right joyously.”
Without criticizing our Brother Spurgeon, I think I’ll follow my own plan – perhaps a more simple plan.
Let’s start with TAKING UP.
As I have said far too many times lately, it is an easy thing to mix-up, or blend, points of history. As Christians of the 21st century we listen to this reference to the cross, and we look through the cross of Christ. Please remind yourselves that the disciples knew nothing about Jesus’ cross at this point. This is the first time that the Greek word “stauros” (stow-ros’) is used in the Word of God. So what did they think when they heard the Lord use the word? They did know that the Romans had been crucifying criminals ever since the days of Antiocus Epiphanes. Was this word used in any other way than in punishment and death? If I was one of the twelve on that occasion, I might not have heard anything else that Jesus said because my mind got stuck on that one word. “What did Jesus mean? What did Jesus mean?”
So does it mean, as Spurgeon suggested, giving up of certain pleasures? Of course there are evil pleasures which should be sacrificed for righteousness’ sake, but their loss should not come in the same sentence with “stauros” (stow-ros’) – “cross.” The Lord did not equate giving up cigarettes or marijuana with taking up our “cross.” Does the cross entail suffering poverty? I suppose that it might, if that hunger and loss came as a result of persecution for the service of Christ. But poverty due to a bad economy, or a drought, or laziness should not be considered a “cross.” And certainly, loss due to sin, as felt by the prodigal son, is not the same thing as a cross. But there are people in this world who think so.
In fact, I think that point needs to be reiterated. We are to “take up” our cross not build one for ourselves. I have known professing Christians who made themselves so obnoxious that they were forsaken by just about every soul that they ever knew, and they called it their “cross.” I don’t know if my illustration fits this particular point, but it is so ridiculous that I have to share it with you. I was in downtown Spokane Thursday, and saw a beggar at the side of the road at Brown and Second. His – or her – sign caught my attention before I saw the face. The placard simply read: “Too ugly for prostitution.” And to be absolutely truthful, I’m not sure I have ever seen a more ugly face. I was not sure if it was male or female. I am reasonably sure that the person’s lifestyle had contributed to the way that he/she/it looked. I don’t think that person’s face was the kind of cross to which Jesus referred.
Let’s not forget the context of our text. Christ had been telling us to expect persecution. He tells us that the disciple should not expect to be treated any better than his Lord. “Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul.” “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.” “For I am come to set a man at variance against his Father, and the daughter against her mother.” “A man’s foes shall be they of his own household.” Clearly the context of this “cross” is exactly like the Lord Jesus’ cross which was still yet to come. I fear that some Christians trivialize “the cross” when it comes to their own lives. They moan and groan over problems in their lives which have no bearing on the word of the Lord here.
What are you suffering for Christ – on behalf of your Saviour? “Are you resisting unto blood striving against sin”? Do you have foes of your own household because they reject your Saviour? Do they call you “Beelzebub” as they have called your Master? Or are you just complaining about your arthritis again?
Christ tells us that TAKING UP OUR CROSS means little if we are not FOLLOWING Him.
We studied this matter of following Christ about eighteen months ago, so I’ll not extend this point too far. But it needs to be said that “following Christ” is an important Biblical subject. This is the twelfth time that the word has been used in the Book of Matthew. It is said that the disciples “followed” Christ, and the Lord Jesus commanded them to “follow” Him. It is an important word, and it is an important action.
In Matthew 4 four of Jesus’ disciples left their nets in order to follow Christ. Their nets were not a part of their cross, so they left them behind. Matthew himself, got up and left his custom house in order to follow the Lord. What is it that Matthew 8:19-23 teaches us about following Christ? “And a certain scribe came, and said unto him, Master, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. And another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my Father. But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead. And when he was entered into a ship, his disciples followed him.” Following Christ may involve taking up our cross, but it also entails leaving other things behind. May the Holy Spirit guide each of us into understanding what to take up and what to drop.
One of the questions with which I didn’t deal in my earlier message was the purpose in our following Christ. There are a multitude of scriptures which say that multitudes followed Christ looking for miracles. They weren’t seeking salvation or righteousness, they were looking for food or health. Sometimes the Lord blessed those people with the temporary desires of their hearts. Sometimes He didn’t. But to the disciples He said things like “follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” The Lord wants us to follow Him in order to serve Him – not in order to be served. In John 21, after His resurrection Christ had His “lovest thou me” conversation with Peter. “Then Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved following… Peter seeing him saith to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do? Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me.” What is the significance of that last statement? “Follow thou me.”
These scriptures, along with others, remind us that Christ isn’t looking for an audience. His was not a fancy dinner of bread and fish, followed by a stage show filled with jokes and insights. When He said, “He that taketh not his cross, and followth after me, is not worthy of me,” He was implying that there was work to be done.
There is probably not a pastor on earth, who would not love to fill his auditorium with people – whether or not they were at that point in time earnestly seeking the truth which he intended to preach. Most of us would rather preach to a hundred than to a dozen, just so long as most of them were awake. And even if that hundred wasn’t hungry or thirsty after righteousness, the preacher can always hope that the Lord would create in them that hunger, perhaps even through the sermon on that particular day.
But may I say, particularly to you good people from the TriCities, if you want to a pastor or missionary to commit himself and his family to coming to minister to you, you need to convince him that you sincerely want him. You need to show both to him and to the Lord that you are ready to follow, not at a distance, but up close. Are you ready to leave things behind, and to pick up the cross that the Lord would like you to bear, and to follow Christ? If you want some pastor to commit himself to you, then you need to be committed yourself. I think that the Lord will forgive me for altering His scripture in this way, but “he that taketh not his cross, and followth after Christ, may not be worthy of the ministry of a servant of Christ.”
“He that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.”
My third point is FINDING one’s life.
In the context of this chapter – In the context of serving and following Christ in the midst of potentially lethal persecution – finding one’s life is equivalent to avoiding trouble in order to avoid death at the stake or in crucifixion. As I keyed in that last statement the significance of the word “stauros” (stow-ros’) struck me. There have been thousands – perhaps hundreds of thousands – of baptistic people who were chained to stakes – “stauros” – to be burned to death for their faith in Christ and their love of the Bible. Perhaps the original twelve disciples didn’t, at this point, grasp the fact that Christ would soon die on one of these “stauros” but in just a few months they would understand. And if they thought back to this chapter they should have remembered that Jesus spoke of their own “stauros.” as well.
Under those conditions, when evil men, minions of Satan, threaten execution against the followers of Christ, if professing Christians “save” (or find) their lives by denying their Saviour or their faith, then they are unworthy of Christ. And they prove that they don’t really possess the life which really matters.
Obviously, what Jesus was doing in verse 39 was contrasting earthly life and eternal life. There is not much which I need to say in order to make this more clear. If, for the sake of our seventy years on earth, we refuse to pick up our cross – If we deny what we had earlier professed about the Saviour, it proves that we are not the children of God whom we professed to be. We may have regained our earthly lives, but it was at the expense of eternal life.
And conversely, he that LOSETH his life for the sake of Christ, shall find it.
The Lord is not looking for martyrs in the sense of the current definition of the word. God doesn’t necessarily want His saints running to the Catholics or Muslims, pleading with them to kill us. He doesn’t want us climbing to the top of one of the nearby mountains all taking some poisonous cocktail, ala Guyana’s Jim Jones. But the Lord does want us to be martyrs in the original sense of the word and in the Biblical sense – “witnesses” – “martus” (mar’-toos). Christ wants us to pick up our cross, whatever that might be under the circumstances, and to fall into line behind the Saviour as He walks toward Golgotha carrying His cross. It may not be that our earthly lives will be taken from us by wicked men and more wicked religions. But if that is the requirement and the Lord’s will, then we need to be willing and ready.
“He that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.”